Page 206 of Brutal Prince

“There’d better be fucking champagne.” I glare at him until he looks at me, and then I intensify it even more. “Else I’m not taking another step.”

I reign in my mare, and Briar’s gelding plods on a few steps before he brings him to a stop. He looks over his shoulder, clearly exasperated with me. “Fine, there’s champagne. But it’s definitely warm, and possibly even flat by now.”

“I said we could trot.” I push my knees into my mare’s ribs, and she starts forward. “But nooooo. Briar’s a little chicken shit bitch, isn’t he?”

“You’re gonna pay for that,” he murmurs quietly, but also just loud enough for me to hear.

I smirk to myself, shaking my head. We’ve been riding through this gorgeous forest just south of the Devil’s Spine for the last three hours and it truly has been everything Briar said it would be. I’m almost starting to feel like myself again, and that’s saying a lot. These past few months have been difficult. Sleeping pills helped, as did the anti-anxiety medication Briar’s doctor gave me for the panic attacks I kept having. But there was always that feeling lurking deep inside me, like there was something bad waiting just around the corner. That it would pounce as soon as I let my guard down.

Briar seems to be doing fine, but I can never tell with him. I mean, we’re not living together or anything, so I don’t know what he’s like the times I’m not with him. He’s always been one to put on a brave face, so he could be hiding a ton of pain about losing his friend.

And not just a friend. A half-brother. A fact I’m still trying to wrap my head around.

One of many, in fact.

A lot of shit came to light when the police started their investigation. Brandon Baker, Marcus’s father, was arrested for multiple jewelry heists and as an accessory to murder. They’re also opening a case against him for the possible homicide of Natalie Briar after Brandon started spouting some shit about being glad that he’d dealt with that whoring bitch.

Briar told me it was an accident, and that’s what everyone thought. But one of the witness statements mentioned that Natalie’s brake lights came on long before she went off the side of the road.

Her car, however, never slowed down.

The wreckage of her vehicle has long since been harvested for scrap metal, but I guess everyone would like to heap as many charges on Brandon’s head as judicially possible to make sure the creep never gets out of jail.

One case reopened, another case closed.

And boy, were the police in Lakeview only too happy to archive my mother’s homicide file. After the insurance company began pressuring them to take another look at the evidence, an internal investigation revealed that several of the officers working the case had been paid off to screw up the case.

All by Marcus’s dad, of course.

Lured with some time knocked off his sentence, Brandon gave a full confession about how he’d forced his son to break into people’s homes and steal the jewelry Briar’s father had made for them.

Briar told me about the beatings Marcus got. Seems they were very real indeed. Marcus had hospital files thick as an encyclopedia with multiple instances of domestic abuse injuries.

He was just as good as Briar at keeping up appearances. Plus, it seemed he could endure a shit load more pain when he smoked that weed vape of his. Healed faster, too.

With such an extensive history of abuse, I almost feel sorry for Marcus.

Then I remember what it felt like when he bit my breast, and the feeling goes away.

If Marcus had lived, he would have been charged with arson, rape, and first-degree murder. They matched his DNA to hair, skin, and semen samples found on my mother’s body.

I feel less sorry for him every day.

“Hungry?”

I snap out of the past and come back to the present feeling a little glum for all my macabre introspection.

Until I see the suggestion of a cabin up ahead.

“Is that…?”

“I don’t like picnics,” Briar announces like he’s in a confessional booth at mass.

I spur my mare into a trot, too eager to see what’s ahead to be bothered if Briar’s keeping up. As soon as her hooves plod on flagstones, I slide off my mare and absently loop her reign around a nearby tree branch.

This is exactly how I always pictured the grandmother’s cabin in Red Riding Hood. From the log walls to the smoke curling from the chimney.

“It’s gorgeous,” I breathe, hurrying to the front door.

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